Don't Bite Me


Dear Eugene,

You might think I don't like going to the mall but I do.  And if I am to ask you to take a wild guess what I like to look at I bet you can't get it right :)

Books, of course, that's easy.  No.  I am talking about something other than books.

I like to look at toys, play with them.

Last night I dropped off my daughter at church and got a couple of hours to burn.  Library first, no doubt.  Then I went to the toys.

I saw an anime cat figurine that can sing three different raps songs at the push back of her hip-hop flat cap and of course I pushed it three successive times to release the full-length magic.  A father with his carbon-copy toddler laughed and I think they finally found what they were looking for right in my hands.  I should get a cut of the profit.

The mall is a colorful place, isn't it?  Contrary to our cynical self-denial (not that it happens too often), there's happiness to be found among the colors.

In his "Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book," Walker Percy talked about one common kind of consciousness of self:

"The diverted self.  In a free and affluent society, the self is free to divert itself endlessly from itself. It works in order to enjoy the diversions that the fruit of one’s labor can purchase. The pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of diversion, and in this society the possibilities of diversion are endless and as readily available as eight hours of television a day: TV, sports, travel, drugs, games, newspapers, magazines, Vegas."

Well, he didn't live to see the day of internet and smartphone.

But what is so wrong with being diverted?  Life is tough.  It is rare to have a moment of solace, however manufactured it might be.  The colors are all there, the smell great, lighting just perfect, and everybody in this world of...let's just call it a harm-reduction, stress-containment cocoon, looks genuinely content.

Yet beneath it all, there is a strong, unyielding hostility.

Yes, this world of colorful diversion adamantly resists and resents a certain something.  Do you feel that too?  The crouching beast breathing a deep, low growl out of its slow-burning furnace of nostrils, warning you: Don't even try, have you met it?

The beast is guarding something sacred, untouchable, a Holy Grail, keeping the colors from bleeding away and solace dying off.  The beast has only one enemy.  If this enemy is kept at bay, everybody is safe to live another day of calming diversion.  The beast is a hero with one hatred to keep it super.

The enemy is Questioning.

If it makes you happy
It can't be that bad?!
If it makes you happy
Then why the hell are you so sad?

I didn't ask that.  Sheryl Crow did.

Bite her, Alex

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